Travel

EXOT BOOKS

CLICK MAP — For more information.

TREASURE MAP

The map to treasure is decorated with dozens of directions. There are the ways forward and the ways back, the places we pass through, the places we only pass by, the places we remember, the places we forget. The treasure, too, is manifold. There's destination, there's detour, there's what we bring and what we leave behind, there's what we lose along the way, there's what we find. And finally, there is what we carry back with us to that part of the map we call home. Sir Richard F. Burton wrote: "A traveler's legs are like blossoming branches, and he himself grows and gathers the fruit." Here then are some of those fruits, those Treasures from Elsewhere, gathered on this constantly evolving journey.

EXOT BLUE

CLICK BLUE — For more information.

Pilgrim's Feather

They all knew Cap'n Barnacle Bellweather, who spluttered and spat and cursed and laughed as he chased his mates all through the tavern, overturning tables and glasses as he went.
Left alone there in the doorway, gazing around the room, Nicolas could scarcely believe his eyes.
Men with pictures on their skin! Men with one eye and one arm, and with rings through their ears and their noses! Women with their torn skirts hitched up over their scarred thighs, and thick black cigars clenched between their stained teeth!
And the maps! Every available surface was littered with them, maps of every conceivable inch of the unknown; maps to treasure, the boy would subsequently learn. But even now they seemed to have yielded up their fruits of search quite literally, piled high as they were with all the illicit cargo that found its way into the tavern via the deep pockets and quick hands and tempers of the pirates who drank at its tables and often slept in its dark corners. Everywhere there were piles of spice and remnants of silk, heaps of ivory and ebony and mother of pearl, and mountains of exotic tropical fruits unheard of to anyone who hadn't spent a lifetime crossing and re-crossing the open seas...sweet hairy rambutans and lychees, pawpaws and pine nuts and mangosteens, figs and dates from the desert, kelps and hiziki from the sea, and from the mountains a sour apple with the dry scaly skin of a snake.
Despite his involvement in his own games, Captain Bellweather had not forgotten the boy.
"Ladies an' pirates," he announced, smashing a glass against a tabletop to get their attention, "might I be introducin' to you this misfortunate pilgrim of your yer own youth truly, now come ta tell us of 'is woes o' searchin', come to add 'is own page to the book o' the quest." (R. Nemo Hill)